38 if you start worrying about something in a house like the one Frances Harvey lived in, in the dead of night, alone, you will go on worrying about it until dawn. She was out of sleeping pIlls. She remembered having bought a fresh box of sedatives for her mother t- e day before she died. She got up and went into her mother's closed room, where the bed had heen dismantled for airing, its wooden parts propped along the walls. On the closet shelf she found the shoe box in to which she had packed away the familiar articles of the bed- side table. Inside she found the smal1 enamelled-cardboard box, with the date and prescrIption inked on the cover in rr otsie Poteet's somewhat prissy hand- writing, but the box was empty She was surprised, for she realized that her mother could have used only one or two of the pIlls. Frances was so determined to get some sleep that she searched the entire little store of things in the shoe box quite heartlessly, but there were no pIlls. She returned to her room and tried to read, but could not, and so smoked instead and stared out at the dawn-blackening sky. The house sighed. She could not take her mind off the Negro gIrl. If she died . . . When It was light, she dressed and got Into the car. In town, the postman was unlocking the post office to sort the early mail. "I declare," he said to the rural mail car- rier who arrived a few minutes later, "Miss Frances Harvey is driving herself crazy. Going back out yonder to the cemetery, and it not seven o'clock in the . " mornIng. "A w," said the rural deliveryman skeptically, looking at the empty road. "That's right. I was here and seen her. You wait there, you'll see her come back. She'll drive herself nuts. Them old maids like that, left in them old houses-crazy and sweet, or crazy and mean, or just plain crazy. They just ain't locked up like them that's down in the asylum. That's the only difference." "Miss Frances Harvey ain't no more than thirty-two, three years old." "Then she's just got more time to get crazier in. You'll see." T HAT day was Friday, and Tom Beavers, back from] ackson, came up Frances Harve) 's sidewalk, as usual, at exactly a quarter past seven in the evening. Frances was not "going out" yet, and Regina had telephoned her long distance to say that "in all probability" she should not be receiving gentlemen cc. "cc Wh ld M """ R In at wau ama say r' e- gina asked. Frances said she didn't know, which was not true, and went LE HIßOU E T LA POUSSIQUE TTE Hibou et Minou allèrent à la mer Dans une barque peinte en jaune-canari. lIs prirent du miel roux et beaucoup de sous Enroulés dans une lettre de crédIt. Le hibou contemplait les astres du ciel, Et chantait, en grattant sa guitare, "0 Minou chérie, ô MInou ma belle, o Poussiquette, comme tu es rare, Es rare, Es rare! o Poussiquette, comme tu es rare! " Au chanteur dit la chatte, "Noble sieur à deux pattes, V otre voix est d'une telle élégance! V oulez-vous, cher Hibou, devenIr mon epoux? Mais que faire pour trouver une alliance? " lIs voguèrent, fous d'amour, une annee et un lour; Puis, au pays OÙ Ie bong fleurit beau, . Un cochon de lait surgit d'une forêt, U ne bague accrochée au museau, Museau, Museau, U ne bague accrochée au museau "Cochon, veux-tu bien nous vendre pour un rien Ta bague?" Le cochon consentit. Donc ils prirent Ie machin, et Ie lendemain matin Le dindon sur Ie mont les unit. lIs firent un repas de maigre et de gras, Se servant d'une cuillère peu commune; E t là sur la plage, Ie nouveau menage Dansa au clair de la lune, La lune, La lune, Dansa au clair de la lune. -FRANCIS STEEGMULLER . right on cooking dinners for rr am every weekend. In the dining room that night, she sat across one corner of the long table from Tom. The useless length of pol- ished cherry stretched away from them into the shadows as sadly as a road. Her plate pushed back, her chin resting on one palm, Frances stirred her coffee and said, "I don't know what on earth to do with all of Mama's clothes. I can't give them away, I can't sell them, I can't burn them, and the attic is full already. \\That can I do?" "}T ou look better tonight," said Tom. "I slept," said Frances. "I slept and slept. From early this morning until ff -U 0 ( !J, Á-\.'::J- tr , \' . '" just 'while ago. I never slept so well." Then she told him about the Negro near the cemetery the previous after- noon, and how she had drIven back out there as soon as dawn came, and found him again He had been walking across the open field near the remains of the house that had burned down. There was no path to hIm from her, and she had hurried across ground uneven from old plowing and covered with the kind of small, tender grass It takes a very skillful mule to crop. "Wait!" she had cried. "Please wait!" The Negro had stopped and waited for her to reach him "Your daughter?" she asked, out of breath. "Daughter?" he repeated. "The colored girl that was in the wagon yesterday. She was sick, you said, so I wondered. I could have taken her to town in the car, but I just didn't think. I wanted to know, how is she? Is she very sick?" He had removed his old felt nigger hat as she approached him. "She a whole lot better Miss Frances. She gOIng to be